The cruel and beautiful man who ruined my life has everything he wants—everything except me.

Five years ago, Clayton Rorick loved me. Or so I thought. Turned out he only wanted to get his hands on my daddy’s company. Heartbroken, I ran away with nothing but the clothes on my back. Like a twisted Cinderella. When my father dies, leaving my sisters in a desperate situation, it’s up to me to help them.

I’ll have to beg the man who broke my heart to save us.

But Clayton hasn’t forgotten me and what he wants in exchange for his help is…my body, my heart and my soul.

‘The Tycoon’ took me an extraordinarily long time to finish, despite the novella-length of the whole story. Admittedly, I was distracted with everything else that left reading the last priority on my list.

But still, I got through it, albeit on first or second gear throughout, and at a snail’s pace and there just wasn’t enough rev for me to keep my eyes glued to it. The long story short is: woman finds out that she’s been played by her father and fiancé all along; 5 years later, they’re reunited unwittingly and in a twist of events, she gets manoeuvred into a marriage to help save her sisters who are all in some trouble of their own.

Molly O’Keefe tackles a tricky second-chance romance trope; I think most readers, after reading the injustice done to Veronica would expect some sort of grovelling or some grand gestures that would place Clayton on a playing field where he could ‘earn’ back Veronica’s affections. What we got however, were Veronica’s own musings and doubts about Clayton’s supposed change and how much he was willing to compromise for her this time, though her wariness didn’t always seem backed up by his actions.

But an imbalance in the POVs here meant that we mostly had Veronica’s side of the story—her struggles, her feelings, her emotions—while Clayton’s few scenes in his POV simply made him as remote, aloof and cold-hearted as ever. Acknowledging his mistake with Veronica 5 years ago and apologising in so few lines, then expecting Veronica to cave to his manipulative marriage demands made him seem an unsympathetic, unremorseful character, especially since he’d admitted to using sex as a way to get her defences down.

Seriously?!

It levelled out eventually: less lies, more truth, less obscuring, more sharing and the easing into forgiveness, though by that time, I was bored and skimming. ‘The Tycoon’ would have been a better read for me if there’d been more peaks and valleys—more spikes of the emotional fallout, I guess, but since that didn’t happen, it ended up more exasperating than exciting.

Ultra-wealthy and super powerful, the King family is like royalty in Texas. But their secrets can be deadly.

Fake boyfriend. Real danger.Journey King is an expert at managing the family business. But when her father returns to Houston hell-bent on making a play for the company, Journey will do anything to stop him, even if that means going to Frank Evans for help. Frank deals in information, the dirtier the better. Rugged and rock solid, he's by far her best ally - and also the most dangerous.

Frank knows better than to get tangled up with the Kings. But something about Journey's rare vulnerability drags him deep into enemy territory... and into her darkest past. Pretending to be her boyfriend may be necessary for their plan to work, but Frank soon finds helping Journey is much more than just another job - and he'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

Reading ‘The Fearless King’ was sort of bizarre, because it felt like a very well-written drama that I wanted more of, but couldn’t understand because I was tossed straight into the middle of a series at say, episode 143 with a backlog of events that I’d already forgotten about having read the first book a long time ago. As a result, this hardly felt like a standalone with a sorely-lacking backstory that I had to spend quite a bit of time figuring out, right up until the halfway point of the book.

Pare down the layers however, and Frank and Journey’s story is relatively simple at the heart of it, minus the family drama taking place over corporate talk, hostile takeovers and real estate/business territory being muscled in on. He’s her white knight (sort of), she’s his protection project when her abusive father returns to overthrow all her family had worked for. Throw in a fake dating scenario until the emotions turn real, then pad it with even more complicated business and family networks and that’s what ’The Fearless King’ really is about. Basically, if you’re into romantic fiction that deals with corporate manoeuvring, manipulation and backstabbing, then this pretty much takes these themes and runs with them.

I’ve always liked Katee Robert’s compelling writing and this book is just another reminder why.

But there were some things that nagged at me: the insertion of a secondary character’s POV added along with Frank’s and Journey’s that felt out of place, with the background of a family pitted against each other to the extent that some characters seemed as though they were cut out of a Disney villain storyboard. Essentially Robert writes about the scarred, ugly side of powerful families so screwed up and so hungry for power and so…redemption-less and that my reading flagged a little when I got to the middle of it.

Still, Robert’s protagonists surprised me at several turns; Frank/Journey don’t entirely conform to stereotypes even if they sort of stumble into accidental heroism, where it doesn’t take a mountain to recognise that unnamed emotion called love. I can’t quite guess where Robert’s going with this whole tangled mess but it’s looking to be quite a journey—pun unintended.

Special Agent Wyatt Tanner has always worked undercover. He thrives in the dark of the night. He survives by turning himself into someone else. But living so long in the shadows can make a man forget who he really is. When people start dying, when he finds blood on his own hands, he questions the choices he has made, the people he is with.

Can he find his way back to the light? Can he trust the beautiful woman who needs his help? Or does she also have a secret life?

He'll have to make one desperate play to find out…

Barbara Freethy is not an author I usually turn to for my usual Romantic Suspense fix, but the blurb of this book sounded interesting enough. At least, well enough because it rubs all my kinks about undercover and double identities the right way.

Freethy has up a great opening that catches Wyatt Tanner smack dab in the middle of an undercover op, or at least in the middle of a nefarious start of one, where he infiltrates a possible case of industrial espionage at Nova Star for the FBI. That much sets the tone for ‘Desperate Play’, where he gets tangled more and more in the affairs of Astrophysicist and employee of Nova Star Avery Caldwell who’s found herself an unwitting player in a murder investigation.

Freethy’s red herrings—in the form of random suggestions, insinuations and some supposed clues—that throw suspicion on every character do keep the good ol’ whodunnit mystery rolling and kept me guessing because the big picture couldn’t be put together. The only downside is that it didn’t make the secondary characters likeable at all, while putting only the protagonists above questioning.

Still, ‘Desperate Play’ ended up an unexpectedly slow read for me somehow, with a writing style—sentences, dialogue, etc—that felt a little…amateurish(?) at times…this is however, a personal preference about style coming into play here.

From a steady trot in the first quarter, I also thought that the pacing faltered towards the middle as I went through pages of Avery being a naive pushover where her dead, flaky friend was concerned (the questions she asks as well seem to show that), with Wyatt’s rather adept juggling of his undercover identity becoming the only thing that kept me going.

The rather unsettled ending is certainly a set-up for Freethy next few books in this series, but I did finish the book feeling a bit more short-changed than usual.

HE’S THE MEANEST BOSS EVER.SHE’S THE SWEET SHY INTERN.THEY’RE ABOUT TO WRECK EACH OTHER CRAZY.

My name is Sydney Lucas. I am smart, deathly shy, and one-hundred percent determined to make my own way in the world. Which is why I jumped at the chance to intern for Mr. Nick Brooks despite his reputation. After ten failed interviews at other companies, he was the only one offering. Plus, everyone says he knows his stuff and surely a man as stunningly handsome as him can’t be “the devil incarnate,” right? Wrong.

Oh…that man. That freakin’ man has got to go! I’ve been on the job one week, and he’s insulted my mother, wardrobe shamed me, and managed to make me cry. Twice. Underneath that stone-cold, beautiful face is the evilest human being ever. But I’m not going to quit. Oh no. For once in my life, I’ve got to make a stand. Only every time I open my mouth, I can’t quite seem to muster the courage. Perhaps my revenge needs to come in another form: destroying him quietly.

Because I’ve got a secret. I’m not really just an intern, and Sydney Lucas isn’t my real name.

There’s always a bizarre lick to Mimi Jean Pamfiloff’s stories that I can’t seem to shake off each time I begin a book of hers. ‘Digging a Hole’ isn’t too different, where in alternating chapters, the flashback story of a crazy-arse tycoon tries to kidnap his own family and subject them to naked yoga is recounted. Add this to the general storyline of Georgie Walton/Sydney Lucas applying incognito for an internship within her family’s company under a mean, lean boss a few months later, the crazy does go a few notches up.

But I’ll admit that my challenge with a Pamfiloff read is always sifting the good from the insane. And as a large part of the story had to do with what happened a few months prior to Sydney/Georgie working for Nick, well, that bit came off as the least believable.

So needless to say, ‘Digging a Hole’ started off zany.

Georgie banked on the fact that she was invisible to people, without a fake identity or social security card—because it was glossed over. On the other hand, Nick Brooks had no sweet side. He abused, she cowered. He insulted, she cried, even if it was deliberate bullying as a test to see if she stood up for herself. But when all was finally untangled, their convoluted, complicated relationship merely showed the gap (in every sense of the word) between Georgie and Nick, especially the former’s naïveté and at-times juvenile behaviour, with some cringe-worthy scenes that I actually wished didn’t happen.

I did think that the characterisation of Georgie/Nick was shaky though, and them blowing hot and cold didn’t make it easy to get a grasp on either Georgie or Nick who seemed like 2 entirely different people by the time I was three-quarter way through the story.

The long and short of it is, if Pamfiloff dialled down the zany in her writing, I really think I could have liked this a lot more. Fiction obviously calls for the suspension of disbelief, but every Pamfiloff book that I’ve read swings back and forth between being absorbing and plain mad while aiming to keep a rom-com lightness to everything—just sometimes makes it impossible to do so. That she’s got some gems of insights, unexpected twists and some good ol’ writing for a solid plot cushioned in between made the book worth it for me, though I really wished these took centre stage instead of the over-the-top weirdness that hit me full-frontal.

Essentially, ‘Digging a Hole’ got good halfway through, as the odd bits finally, finally got left behind and the real thing kicked in, when the title finally made so much sense. I’m glad I pushed through to finish this.

This whole contest was supposed to be easy. I know, I know. Famous last words.

It’s a long story, but I messed up at work. Big time. To earn back the trust of my boss, I promised to save one of our magazines. Yep. That Hot Dad contest you’ve seen advertised all over the place was my idea. And if I’m successful, if I’m able to increase our online readership, then I get a shot at my dream job.

But the one thing I never expected to happen, happened: Contestant number ten, Grayson Malone. Hello, Mr. Difficult. And did I mention sexy as hell?

Unfortunately he knows me. The old me, anyway. And while we might be older now, I remind him of before. Of the woman who broke his heart, who hardened him, and who left him alone to raise the cutest little boy I’ve ever seen.

But I don’t want a relationship. And I definitely don’t fall for single dads with baggage. Even ones with chiseled abs and killer smiles.

But he got to me. They got to me. Him and his son and their messy, crazy life. But I got to him too. I see the stolen glances. I feel the walls he built start to crumble. I recognize that there’s an unexpected beauty to the chaos in his life.

And now that the contest is about to end, we’re left to decide whether the last six months were just fun or if what we have is worth risking it all?

‘Worth the Risk’ begins with the eating of humble pie for a socialite-magazine princess who’s never quite had to work for anything in her life. Sidney Thornton has gotten by because of her famous name—in a somewhat fickle manner—until her magnate father puts his foot down and insists she dislodges the silver spoon in her mouth and work for her salary and the position in the company she’s always wanted.

Grayson Malone is her very reluctant target for the magazine she’s been relegated to working for—a magazine that runs outside her kind of social life—and already, she’s his target for everything wrong in his life. Apparently.

Their history however, with him as the scorned, middle-class kid and her upper-class snooty ways, isn’t one Grayson has forgotten and in many ways, he makes her pay for it. With a chip so large on his shoulder about the woman who left him and his own social-class hang-ups, he can be a bit of an arse as he holds Sidney to the unpleasant memories he has of her as gospel truth.

Basically, he hates her, but wants her.

On the contrary, Sidney’s painted constantly into a corner while crying not fair at everyone (though not without her fair attempt at manipulation, several instances of shallow behaviour and wimpily keeping things from him) and acting like a whipped puppy coming back for more.

Bromberg lays Grayson’s and Sidney’s issues bare from the very start and her writing is compelling enough that it makes you stay the course. Somewhat.

But just as there’s a little progress between them, we’re back at square one, with this push-pull getting rinsed and repeated so much that I thought it stretched the book longer than it should have been. The long and short is, I read this through somehow, but couldn’t find it in myself to sympathise with either Grayson or Sidney at all, too lost as they were in their own heads with their own personal hang-ups and the kind of lifestyles they were determined to lead. Neither quite really fought for each other it seems, so this simply ended up as a story with a pairing I couldn’t get behind at all.

Mindalby, a small town, a community, a home. But when the mill that supports the local cotton farmers and employs many of the town's residents closes unexpectedly, old tensions are exposed and new rifts develop. Everyone is affected and some react better than others, but one thing is certain: living on the edge of the outback means they have to survive together, or let their town die.

Lynsey Carter's relationship with her father is fraught, so when she hears that the cotton mill that is her birthright has closed down (and her father is lying low), she returns to Mindalby to support her mother and seek out answers. She hasn't been back since high school, since she left her heart behind with Julian Stone. But Julian didn't want it, or her; he wanted a life in Mindalby.

Torn between family loyalty and duty to the community, between the life she's built for herself and the passion for Julian she just can't seem to shake, Lynsey needs to decide if her home–coming is for a visit – or for real.

I’ve always like Lee Christine’s writing and ‘A Daughter’s Choice’ is no different. The context and the circumstances in which this story are unusual to say the least, though distilled, it’s one of a girl returning home to the Australian Outback to take care of affairs that have gone awry (thanks to a corrupt, deadbeat father), then meeting an old flame who’d broke her heart. With a narrative built around the failure of a mill on which the livelihood of a small community depends, Lynsey and Julian reunite out of necessity—returning home does that in a small town—and it takes only just a few days together to remind them how good they could be and have been.

But more on that later.

Pacing-wise, I thought the story did drag on a bit when it became slower going than I expected (Christine is an author I read for romantic suspense after all) and the slower pace did throw me off a bit. That translated to me put this down and taking it up numerous times, and when I took it up, there were parts I trudged through just trying to stay interested in the subject matter.

Apart from following the developments and the slight suspense written into this (which perked me up), I was baffled how Lynsey and Julian fell into bed when nothing between them was resolved, all within a few days after a separation of 9 years. Julian’s supposed friends-with-benefits situation with another woman seemed to become a non-issue when I’d actually hoped for that particular casual relationship to be dissolved even before Lynsey/Julian got together again. Admittedly, second-chance romances don’t necessarily sit all too well with me when the slightest thing give me cause to question the validity of the reunion. Essentially, I thought there were relationship issues which needed ironing out but felt glossed over in favour of the suspense despite both protagonists trying to be mature about themselves.

In all, the dive into the Australian Outback is always a cultural shift that I love to read about after all because such writers—and I’ve gone through quite a few of them—offer such different perspectives especially in the romance genre, I think I surprised myself most of all by not really feeling this story at all.

Sparks fly when the hot-shot divorce lawyer meets the high-powered wedding planner. The only question is, what kind?

If you ever get married, remember my name: Max Henderson. In my line of work, you acquire a certain perspective on supposedly everlasting unions. . . .

1. Pre-nups are your friend. 2. The person you married is not the person you’re divorcing. 3. And I hope you didn’t spend much on the wedding because that was one helluva waste of hard-earned cash, wasn’t it?

But some guys are willing to take a chance. Like my brother, who thinks he’s going to ride off into the sunset with the woman of his dreams in a haze of glitter on unicorns. And the wedding planner—the green-eyed beauty who makes a living convincing suckers to shell out thousands of dollars on centerpieces—is raking it in on this matrimonial monstrosity.

The thing is, Charlie Love is not unlike me. We’re both cogs in the wedding-industrial complex. As the best man, I know her game—and I can play it better than her. But after one scorching, unexpected kiss, I’m thinking I might just want to get played.

Wedding-planner, come meet the divorce lawyer: 2 occupations at odds with each other, down to the fundamental beliefs that the people working in these lines should hold. Right? ‘Down with Love’ is where Kate Meader bravely tackles these opposites and tries to prove the contrary with Max Henderson (the first victim, so to speak) and Charlie Love—whose last name is ironically appropriate for her occupation.

Excited as I was by Meader’s blurb of this new series, I was also a little wary, because beneath it lies the stereotypical trope of a commitment phobic player paired with a woman who tries to be sassy and stumbles when the charm comes out. And with Meader’s style of writing, I can say—objectively—that it’s perfectly tailored for the rom-com style that many readers would expect. Meader’s writing is pitched exactly like the voices you hear in romantic comedy, that is, pitch-perfect, if that’s your sort of thing, in other words. That much, it delivers.

Max Henderson kicks of the start of Kate Meader’s new series of cynical men who think they’ve seen the worst of humanity in the battlefield of court when divorce inevitably hits couples. But I think the male POV is tricky to write, period. Getting the fine balance right between voice, hints of vulnerability and the cocky front that many authors try to portray of their alpha males who apparently know so much about women is one that either has me grimacing or smirking. The usual smug, self-satisfied, arrogant tone of Max crosses the line into bar-smarmy faux smoothness and sleazy bad taste and it isn’t frankly something I want to read of a male romantic protagonist who’s head seems to be constantly filled with women’s body parts and what he’d like to do to them. (Here, I’m reminded of another author who’s done the same previously and it isn’t that good a memory, sad to say.)

But because many rom-coms are retellings and rehashes of tropes with varying contexts, character histories and storytelling styles, ‘Down With love’ still feels at its core, one that doesn’t deviate too much from the well-worn but well-loved formula: a woman who finally gives the cynical Max what he’s always fed other women (nothing beyond a night or two) and then it’s the typical reversal of him finally getting a taste of his own medicine just as he realises she’s unlike the others. Cue the game to wear her resistance down, thanks to the perpetual player, no-one-gets-hurt reputation Max strives to cultivate in the first place.

There are a few bits of talking ‘out’ to the reader as well—better known as breaking the fourth wall here, when a character steps out of the fictional word briefly and breaks through the invisible wall separating reader and the cast—and I’m not too sure how I feel about that here. Perhaps Meader seeks to bridge that connection between Max and me when the use of the second person pronoun ‘you’ seems to…mediate this distance that I subconsciously hold, first to convince me that he’s anti-marriage and then later, to convince me that he’s a reformed man. Or perhaps I’m just over-reading this.

In short, I think I wasn’t really feeling this at all sadly—not the pairing, not the context and not the plot. ‘Down With Love’ didn’t exactly move me much even as Meader tries to work out the opposing beliefs of Max and Charlie, and given the many times I managed to walk away and came back to the book (rinse and repeat) it’s clear this isn’t the story for me, as much as I really like Meader’s writing.